The Edison is a downtown Los Angeles cocktail bar built inside the restored boiler room of a 1910 power plant, a cavernous Art Deco space of old turbines, brick, and industrial machinery beneath the Higgins Building.
The setting is the whole pitch. Discover Los Angeles traces the room to the Higgins Building's original private power plant, reopened in 2007 by Andrew Meieran after a long restoration that kept the generators, gauges, and concrete in place. Drinking here means drinking among the machinery that once lit the block.
The design leans into that history. Vaulted ceilings, exposed turbines, mood lighting, and leather seating give the space a steampunk-meets-Deco look that few bars can match for sheer scale. The room reads as a film set, which it has often been.
For years the bar paired that backdrop with absinthe service, period cocktails, and live performance, from aerialists to burlesque, that played above the crowd on busy nights. The drinks list ran to vintage-leaning classics rather than modern experiments. The theatre was as much the point as the pour.
The Edison now operates largely as a private event venue, hosting galas, corporate parties, and celebrations rather than nightly walk-in service. Its own listings frame it as an event space first, with public bar nights appearing on a published calendar rather than a standing weekly schedule. Checking ahead matters more here than at most bars.
That shift is worth stating plainly for anyone planning a visit. A guest cannot assume a Friday drop-in will find the doors open to the public, since a wedding or buyout may have the room. The calendar, not habit, decides whether the bar is serving.
When it is open to the public, a dress code applies, in keeping with the room's formality, and the cocktails carry a downtown price to match the setting. The bar leans on classic builds rather than a long printed menu. The atmosphere does much of the work.
Reviews on Yelp and Tripadvisor, running into the thousands across its long history, return to the space itself as the reason to go, while newer notes flag the move toward private bookings. The consensus is that the room is singular and the access is no longer guaranteed. Planning around an event night is the way in.
The Higgins Building above it opened in 1910 as one of the first steel-frame office towers in Los Angeles, and the basement plant once supplied the building its own electricity before the city grid reached the block. Those industrial bones are what the bar preserved. The turbines and gauges are original to the building rather than imported set dressing.
On its public nights the room has long staged entertainment above the crowd, from aerial acts to jazz combos, and a tableside absinthe service became one of its signatures. The performance calendar shifts with the bookings rather than holding a fixed slate. The scale and drama of the space stay constant even as the programming changes.
Who would love it: anyone drawn to a dramatic, historic room and willing to plan around its calendar. Who should skip it: drinkers who want a reliable walk-in cocktail bar on any given night, since public access here is now the exception rather than the rule.
The smart move is to check the public-events calendar, dress for it, and order a classic cocktail to drink among the turbines. The Edison ranks among the most singular rooms on our best cocktail bars in Los Angeles list and lands in our date-night bars in Los Angeles guide for a dramatic special-occasion night.
For more downtown drinking with surer hours, the full Los Angeles bar guide covers the rest of the district, and many visitors pair an Edison night with a whiskey flight at Seven Grand nearby.
